The trees are out, and it's starting to look like there could actually be a house here one day! Things are happening a lot faster now, let me walk you through what we're looking at.

The black stuff you see in the picture above it called a silt fence. It's meant to keep any debris or runoff on our property and off the street. The silt fence was the first thing installed after the trees came down.

You'll also notice the driveway. This is very close to what the final driveway size/location will be. You might think that this driveway looks super straightforward. You'd be right. Except for that fact that it took months for us to get it through the permitting process. A discussion for another day...

Since the slope of the lot is so steep, we decided to lower the grade of the highest section by about 4ft. We're doing this for a few reasons:

It lowers the elevation of the house significantly. The lot is already near the top of the hill, which puts us above most of our neighbors. If we built a 2-story house without lowering the grade, we would be towering over everyone else. Dropping it by 4ft helps us better fit into the fabric of the neighborhood

It allows for some flatter sections of yard space. Stinky Face and Monkey need a place to run. There are a couple of parks pretty close by, but we wanted them to have at least a little bit of flat yard outside their own house.

It gives us a much flatter driveway, which makes it easier for us to drive in and out from the street, and also gives us a place to play a little basketball.

​Check out these before and after pictures. Here is a picture of the lot before any trees were taken down or grading was done:

That view is looking directly at the new driveway. Here's how it looks after the grading:

See how the berm is gone and the driveway is much more accessible from the street? Also notice how much lower it is than our neighbors driveway; without the retaining wall, our driveway would have likely been higher than theirs.

Next week...digging a big hole for the foundation.

Bye for now,TJ​

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